


To The Lighthouse

by afogocado



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:28:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27235756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afogocado/pseuds/afogocado
Summary: A cluster of snapshots from the summer that you spent with the lonely lighthouse keeper, and your eventual romance.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Reader
Comments: 14
Kudos: 64





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> (yes, the title is absolutely lifted from Virginia Woolf; however, that is where the likeness ends. Sorry, Virginia!)
> 
> Rating will go up for future chapters.

The first postcard comes in the morning after a particularly rough night at work. You hated working hours at the ferry terminal that fell towards closing and to the last fare of the night: it was usually filled with tourists on vacation staying on the island, coming in from the city and roaring drunk in the stumbling close-to-midnight hour.

 _“Dear Miss. You don’t know me-know me, but you have always been very kind to me ever since you started working at the terminal down front in May. I know this—like a lot of things—can be a thankless job at times. So I just wanted to say thank you and tell you how you’re appreciated very much.”_ It was signed from a one Ben Kenobi.

The second one comes a couple of days after.

_“Dear Miss. Ben Kenobi here. You probably remember me from yesterday. I was the one that said, ‘Hello, there,’ to you when you were click-counting the passengers going onto the ferry for the mainland. You liked my hat because it made you laugh: it had the Kool-Aid man on it. Are you fond of Kool-Aid? I like their orange drink.”_

Miss Rita from the Inn that you have a room at is the one who has been bringing the post cards up to you. They’re usually self-stamped, but don’t arrive by mail. She tells you that Mr. Kenobi is the owner of the lighthouse, and that if he had any mail to give to those staying on the island, he usually hand-delivered it on his early morning bike rides before he went to the cafe to have coffee and read the daily newspaper, and wait for the first ferry ride to the mainland.

He went to the mainland often. Sometimes he needed special tools or items for not just the lighthouse, but the small ‘Nook and Cranny’ cafe he’d built inside the base of it. It was a tourist attraction, and open for breakfast or brunch reservations only on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. Rita told you how lonely Mr. Kenobi must be ever since his father passed away last summer, and that the only people she thinks he comes in contact with are those who enjoy his cafe, or those he talks to on ferry rides in and out of the city. He’s seen lunching alone often. He’s seen riding his bike to the old folks’ home with his acoustic guitar strapped on his back, off to entertain and visit with those who may be just as lonely as he is.

“So it probably means a lot to him that you’re kind to him.”

It baffles you to believe that somebody so handsome—from what you can remember; you only see him a handful of times throughout the week—could be so alone. You decide on your lunch break to write a postcard to Mr. Kenobi. You go to the little shelf filled with colorful brochures for tourists in need of adventure. You find the one for the lighthouse and find its address, printing it neatly on one side of the postcard. You’ll send it through the mail rather than hand deliver it.

On the other side you write your note to him: 

_“Dear Mr. Kenobi. I’ve got to say that I can hardly place your face, but I remember your smile and I do remember you saying hello to me on the mornings that I do see you. I still think of your hat; I like their fruit punch drink. I really appreciate receiving your postcards. I’ve come here to start school in the fall. I’m working the terminal through the summer and fall. Have you ran the lighthouse long? Please write back.”_ You debated whether or not to add that last line, but thought ‘what the hell’. You were lonely, too, in a new place and the only people you talk to all day are coworkers who have a clique of their own where you just tagged along, feeling like a pokey and annoying wheel to their wagon of years-long friendship.

You’ll never know how much you should wish that you got to see the look of absolute delight on Ben Kenobi’s face when he checked his mail before going on his bike ride when he found your postcard mixed in with bills and junk.


	2. Chapter 2

With the rain, most people hunker down in their houses on the island. Most people are tourists, here renting a space for a long vacation; some are here year-round. The rain, especially in the morning hours, means a slow time at the terminal. You’re inside working the desk, with your main responsibility being printing out passengers’ tickets for the ferry. So far, there’s been nobody, until now: a man, coming in from the rain, and pushing his hair back with both hands.

He’s wearing a Space Jam t-shirt and cut off light wash jean shorts that stop well above his knees, and untied LL Bean duck boots. He has a red flannel shirt tied around his waist.

“One ticket?” You ask him once he’s made it to the desk.

“Yes.” But his gaze is steady on his hands that fidget over one another.

“For the 10am ride into 1999?”

He finally looks at you, and you worry you’ve gone too far and that your joke was taken as cruelty, and you start stammering an apology, “I’m sorry, I—“ but his face breaks out into a brilliant smile that reaches his beautiful shining eyes.

“1997, actually.”

“We may as well be in that time right now; this computer is acting like it doesn’t want to work.”

He drums his fingertips on the counter and watches you patiently while you struggle and wait for the computer to cooperate. You notice a ring on his left index finger: a dark brown wooden band with a stripe of emerald curved around it. When he uses that hand to push back his hair falling across his forehead, you see the ring must be too big for him: there’s yarn woven around it to make it fit more securely. Probably from his significant other who wasn’t able to guess the right size…

“The summer doesn’t seem to be a real time at all, does it?” He asks you, fidgeting with the little stack of business cards at the ticket desk. They’re filled with contact information for the island’s areas of service: the grocer, the laundromat, the library, the bicycle shop. Every time you add more to the stacks in the mornings, you think of how much like a town or city from a Pokemon game the island feels like. It has everything, except—ironically—a gym. He stacks the cards neatly, then spreads them out like a fan. You don’t tell him to quit messing up your counter.

“Seems like just a pocket of time to fill,” you say, frowning at the computer that’s decided to freeze. “Like, with memories you can’t recall later.”

He hums an impressed sound at your poetic (if not cryptic) response, and then tears a package of Skittles open with his teeth, dumping colorful drops into his palm. He picks out the purple ones and pops them into his mouth. He offers his palm to you while you both wait on the computer, and without even thinking, you pluck out an orange and yellow one. He watches you enjoy them one at a time before opening his bag of candy horizontally to consider the remaining pieces. He plucks a Kleenex from the box on the counter and places all of the yellow and orange pieces onto the tissue and offers it to you.

“Just to keep you happy throughout the day,” he says, folding his open bag carefully so the rest don’t spill out, and shoves it down the deep front pocket of his cut off shorts.

*~*

And so it was, and so it would be until you moved into your student loft in September when classes would start. You’d really only needed a summer job until school started—you’d been awarded a teaching fellowship: a couple classes every semester teaching freshmen how to write as college undergraduates while you completed your graduate-level coursework.

On your nights off, you’d go into the city on the mainland with colleagues and drink and cringe at their terrible karaoke and stare longingly at the steady bright beams coming from the lighthouse. Never in your life did you ever expect to feel so much like Jay Gatsby aching after Daisy Buchanan.

Some nights, you don’t go out with your coworkers, and you instead spend your time in front of the fire with Miss Rita—the innkeeper and owner, where you were staying—where you would play chess with each other, or Miss Rita would cross stitch lewd words onto her little circle of sin and you’d read. Sometimes you’ll read aloud to her. Sometimes she squeals at you over how much she loves Daniel Craig (after learning how to do Google image searches), and how much of a “good lookin’ man” he is, and when she asks, you tell her that you don’t have a celebrity crush. And then she asks if you have a _real_ crush on somebody in real life, and you say _no of course not_ and she says, “Not even Ben Kenobi?”

“You’ve been reading my postcards?!” It’s the only way she could know that you have any connection to him at all.

“Why, sure,” she says plainly. “They’re better than television.”

*~*

Your alarm goes off soon enough—it feels like you’d just gone to sleep—and when you’re close to being ready to leave for work, a light tapping comes from your door. You answer it and tell Miss Rita good morning. She doesn’t say it back. Instead, she launches right into her meddling ways.

“Are you sleeping with the lighthouse keeper?” Miss Rita asks in that matter-of-fact plain way of hers when she brings you your latest postcard from Ben Kenobi.

You all but snatch it out of her paper-thin skinned hand. “No!”

“Okay, I believe you.” She watches you read the card, smiling almost devilishly at the way your face lights up over his words. “Do you want to?”

“I am not answering that question.” You fold the card and tuck it down the front pocket of your jeans.

“Oh, dear it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. If I were your age, I’d be chasing that boy down the street.”

“Miss Rita.”

“He is the cutest thing. Admit it.”

But you won’t. Because you’re afraid once you admit that, then more words will pour out: yes, he’s the cutest; he’s funny, he’s sweet. You think about him constantly; you look for him every day at work, and are sorely disappointed when he doesn’t show up, or you worry you may have missed him.

“He’s a doll.” Miss Rita says. “And he must think the same about you. I’ve never heard of him doing this with the postcards. Going around and delivering them on his little bicycle. Birthday cards, yes. But nothing like this.”

You flush warm embarrassment and want to die, wishing that you were both in the parlor by the fire so that you could hide your face behind your book so Miss Rita can’t see the stupid look on your face.But she does.

*~*


	3. Chapter 3

~*~

You look out for the strange, handsome man from yesterday who shared his candy with you, but you don’t see him again until Thursday. This time he’s in an oversized hooded sweatshirt and chewing on one of the strings, still with the cut off shorts and this time in untied Sperrys: the leather laces slapping wetly onto the hard flooring as he made his way to the vending machines, and then to the spinning rack of postcards. He shoves a bag of Skittles into his hoodie pouch, and buys a postcard from you and tucks it in the paperback he has with him before leaving. 

Hours and hours, and then they’re in the past.

You leave the terminal with your bag slung over your shoulder. This had been a stressful day, being yelled at by irate customers who missed their rides by showing up too late—like you had an Odyssean will to turn the tides of the Atlantic and bring the ferry back. But, that part of the day is behind you now, and it’s the first beautiful day all week: no ominous fog; no gray and rain. Just a June blue, and all the happy houses against the hills are picturesque, and the steady lapping of waves hitting the hard dock pegs is melodious. And Ben Kenobi is sitting on one of the far ends of the doc, his dark khaki Sperrys next to him, his ankles submerged in the water. He looks especially adorable with his blue jeans rolled up mid-calf like a ginger Huckleberry Finn, a polite Tom Sawyer. He’s sitting slightly untied over, head bent and reading a book splayed out over his lap. His autumn hair falls in waves, curtaining his forehead but not hiding that taut concentration line between his eyes. His lips parted slightly, moving as though mumbling the words out loud. You smile wider the closer you get to him, and especially at his soft hums at certain words, and his quiet “oh”s. 

“Ben Kenobi,” you say, startling him out of his reverie and he almost drops his paperback into the ocean. 

“Hello, there,” His smile is as bright as his aquamarine eyes—bluer than the water below and the sky above. “Would you care to join me? I can read to you,” he offers, flashing his book at you: The Mysteries of Udolpho. 

“The title is familiar,” you hum out, sitting down beside him, “but I’ve never read it.” He takes your bag and lies it next to his rucksack that he’s never without. “What’s it about?”

He actually blushes and hugs the book flat against his chest, and flies into telling you. “It’s a romance and adventure and—“

“Mystery?” You ask, grinning. “As the title suggests?”

“Yes. And—“

You chuckle at him at how bright-eyed and excited he is.

“What is it?”

“It’s nothing. Please go on.” You nudge him with your shoulder. 

“I shall not until you answer me.” He leans into you, bumping his shoulder against yours. 

You slip your shoes off and roll your pants past your ankles, dipping your feet into the cool water. His shoulder is still against yours. 

“I just like the way you speak.”

“Oh?”

“You have a nice voice. And its nice to hear it. Since, you know, we talk mainly through writing.” 

He smiles down at the book in his lap. “I like hearing you speak, too, Miss.”

You just look at each other, like you’re talking without having to say anything at all. And he kicks out from under the water, sending a sprinkling above you both, and he’s smiling at you with all of his teeth from this.

You bump your shoulder against him in a playful chide. You stay leaned into him, and he rests his head against yours. “Udolpho?” You prompt him. 

“Yes.” He flips through the book, the pages buzzing against his fingers as they shuffle from the bend. “Emily loves the brave Valencourt, and he loves her, too, but they are separated by duty and war and a great big Gothic castle where she is held captive by her disgustingly evil and lecherous uncle. Set partially in the Alps, there are also bandidos.” He rests the book against his thigh and pulls away to look at you, quite seriously. “You shall yearn and swoon.”

“I’d like to read that someday.”

“Perhaps we could read it together—a summer book club.”

“What if we took turns reading it aloud to one another?”

Ben is delighted. 

~*~

By the third week in June, it becomes all too apparent to you how invested that not only Miss Rita, but the ladies and some gentlemen in her knitting club, have become entirely too invested in the saga of the Great Postcard Exchange between you and the lighthouse keeper. You tried to not be too defensive about it. If you’d shared with anyone back home about this recent phenomenon that brought your daily joy, they’d likely be very interested in this eccentric man. It had been a very long time since you’d been romantically involved, let alone involved at all, and things didn’t end particularly kindly the last time. This was part of the reason why you’d become so attracted to moving a good distance away for school. Yes, nosiness is not a foreign concept in your life, but at this sort of level where it was like entertainment was also not new. One of your coworkers told you that the old folks around here had no sense of boundaries and were terribly excited over anything new. And not only that, everyone had loved Ben’s father so much that they couldn’t stop themselves from being thoroughly intrigued by any developments in his life that weren’t related to him grieving. They thought of Ben as their surrogate grandson—or, that’s how they rationalized the prying. 

And so it goes and comes to be, everyone who knows him sees you walking the island over and over while he reads aloud to you, and you steer him, tugging on shirt sleeves, so he doesn’t crash into anyone. And they fawn together over the sharing of ice cream he holds in a paper cup, bringing the spoon to your mouth, before taking his own bite, or of him pressing Skittles into your mouth while you read to him for a change. Or of you bending down to tie his shoelaces while he doesn’t pause reading to you. It’s a big book, and you move through it quickly, and everyone is anxious to see what the both of you will do next when it’s complete. 

~*~


End file.
